Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind (Clockwork Heart trilogy)

by Pagliassotti Dru

  Isobel held up one of the cards against the card Lars had been punching. “Hand-cut, not die-cut. Somebody was working under rough conditions. We’d better trim them before we run them.”

  “Are they from Mareaux?” Lars asked, as the group checked the edges of the new cards against Ondinium masters and shaved off the rough spots.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  The big man shrugged. “Seems obvious, under the circumstances.”

  “Diplomacy and espionage,” Victor said with satisfaction. “Are these cards why you’re so worried about Exalted Forlore’s safety?”

  “Maybe.”

  That silenced the group. One by one they handed their cards back to Kyle, who put them into order and stood.

  “All right. Let’s see what’s on them. If it’s a program instead of data, this could take a while. And let’s hope your source verified his punches before he passed them to you, or they might not run at all.”

  Taya pulled up her feet to the seat of her chair and rested her chin on her knees. So Victor’s friends were able to intercept and decode luxograph signals. Who else was reading them? She used to think that Ondinium was an impenetrable fortress protected by the Great Engine, but over the last year she’d learned more and more about its secrets and flaws.

  Her friends loaded the cards into the feeder mechanism and moved around the machine, talking about output and chirography and typebars. Taya pulled over Victor’s map. She liked maps; she liked the impression they gave of looking down at the world the way she did when she was flying. It took her a minute or two of study to realize what she was looking at.

  His map showed the area where the train had derailed, marked with a graphite circle. That wasn’t so bad, but the symbols around it looked like the locations of Ondinium’s signaling stations.

  “Victor… where did you get this?”

  The bearded programmer glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to the machine. The last of the cards vanished into the input tray.

  “Data collection is my specialty. The information is out there, if you know how and where to look.”

  “But this is a security breach!”

  “Not my fault if Ondinium can’t protect its secrets.”

  “Please tell me you’re reporting any security weaknesses you find.”

  “I report them.”

  “To the government?”

  “I’m sure some of my colleagues are Council spies.”

  Taya shook her head, folding the map and hiding it under a stack of punch card boxes.

  “I can’t believe you guys let him bring this in here.”

  “We wanted to see the accident site,” Isobel explained. “But usually we make him keep his political stuff in his own rooms.”

  “It’s not a crime to know where Ondinium’s signal stations are located,” Victor objected. “It’s only a crime if you tell someone else.”

  “Like you told us?” Lars growled. Victor spread his hands and shrugged.

  “I didn’t tell you anything. I can’t help it if you know how to read a map.”

  With a series of clicks, a new set of cards began dropping down into a tray. Lars pulled them out and numbered them with an ink pen, then turned and fed them into another machine.

  “What’s that?” Taya asked.

  “Readable output.”

  A slower tapping sound joined the cacophony. Taya turned toward a tall metal-and-wood machine on an oak table by the end of the room. A long, thin roll of paper moved through it.

  “That’s new, isn’t it?”

  “It’s an automated typography machine,” Kyle said, checking the paper feed. “Got the idea from the bank. The output’s printed backward, but it’s not hard to read, once you get used to it.”

  “Someday I’ll fix it to print out the right way,” Lars said. “I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “If you don’t hurry, somebody else will do it first,” Isobel warned.

  “Then it’ll save me the effort.”

  “You need to work on your ambition.”

  “I don’t have any ambition.”

  “We’ve noticed.”

  “So what does it say?” Taya asked, sliding out of the chair.

  Kyle leaned over to look at the ink characters that were slowly being impressed on the paper. His eyes widened and he straightened, giving her a startled look. “It’s Nutcracker Six!”

  “You’re slagging kidding me!” Lars burst out, his eyes going as wide as Kyle’s. “He’s punching blind?”

  “Either that or he taught someone else the code.”

  Isobel cheered and jumped forward, hugging Lars, who was laughing with delight.

  Taya had a sinking feeling that their source wasn’t anonymous anymore.

  “Nutcracker Six,” Victor announced, pulling a battered paperbound volume from a shelf on the other side of the room. He came back and dropped it on the typography machine’s table. It was a ten-year-old, dog-eared copy of The Indices of Physical Output for Mining, Manufacture, and Agriculture, Southeastern Region. Somebody had scrawled a big black 6 across the front cover and on the spine.

  Taya turned and saw that the shelf contained a line of beaten-up volumes, their spines marked 1 to 10.

  “All right,” she asked, grimly. “What’s Nutcracker Six?”

  “A book cipher we worked up several years ago,” Victor said with satisfaction. “‘Nutcracker’ as in ‘this code is a tough nut to crack,’ and numbered to correspond with whatever volume we used as a codebook. To keep it secure, we selected ephemera— incredibly dull reports with small print runs and specialized audiences, likely to be thrown away after a year or two.”

  “Alister enjoyed cryptography,” Isobel added. “We created the ciphers more for the fun of it than anything else.”

  “So how is he?” Lars asked, eagerly. “Is he living in Mareaux? Is he doing all right?”

  Taya rubbed her forehead. Of course they’d guessed. They’d worked with Alister for years before he’d self-destructed and become a murdering Eugenicist.

  Sometimes she wondered if she was the only one who remembered the “murdering Eugenicist” part.

  “Could we please avoid using his name?” she asked plaintively. “If the Council finds out he’s punching cards, they’ll kill him, and that would make Cris very unhappy.”

  The four programmers glanced at each other, sobering.

  “Anyway, we never saw him,” she said. Her mind flew back to the rainy day with Rikard when she’d seen a blind man being led down the street.

  Rikard had searched for the blind man a long time before returning to her. Why? Had the Alzanans asked him to be on the lookout for a blind exalted?

  She thrust the memory aside.

  “He sent us the cards by messenger,” she said. “We don’t really know who they’re from. There’s no name on them, is there?”

  “No….” Lars murmured, glancing at The Indices.

  “All right, then. It’s still an anonymous source.”

  “Once we’re sure the data’s been transcribed, you can burn the cards,” Kyle said. “If you want to be safe.”

  “Wait,” Victor objected. “Don’t burn them; leave them with us or hide them someplace safe. Just in case.”

  “In case of what?” Isobel demanded.

  “In case the anonymous source who punched them ever needs to prove he’s still serving the state.” Victor looked around the table. “In case the Oporphyr Council ever suspected him of breaking the conditions of his exile, for example.”

  Taya understood. One thing she had to admire about Victor; he always planned for the worst.

  “Let’s see what he has to say.”

  The printout took time to run, and the team took more time to decode it. Taya left to go to the icarus central
post office and deliver a letter from Lieutenant Amcathra to his sister. When she returned, the team had translated the mechanically printed numbers on the long strip of paper into a set of neatly handwritten pages. Lars was blotting the last page as she pulled off her armature.

  “Interesting stuff,” Kyle said as she joined them at the table. “Al— your source says military supplies are being shipped from a major corporation in Ondinium to another major corporation in Alzana through front companies: old shelf corporations legitimately established in Mareaux but sold to unnamed investors. It’s a way of hiding the transaction from auditors. However, he managed to track the account numbers back to the Bank of Ondinium.”

  “Whatever’s being sold must violate Ondinium’s trade restrictions,” Victor clarified. “You wouldn’t build that much deniability around a legal interaction.”

  “Firearms?” Taya guessed. Laws strictly controlled the export of munitions and technology.

  “The shipments are listed as raw material — sheet metal, cabling, things like that — but you can never tell what’s really behind a bill of lading.”

  Taya skimmed over the notes, penned in a neat, miniscule handwriting that didn’t suit Lars’ size. Most of it was a list of account numbers, sums, and deposit/withdrawal records.

  “But we still don’t know who’s behind it?”

  “You’d need to get access to the bank’s financial records if you want that information,” Kyle said.

  “If I gave this to the Council, they could get the records.”

  “Assuming none of the decaturs are affiliated with the corporation involved in the scheme,” Victor pointed out. “And assuming you don’t mind answering questions about how you obtained the information.”

  “Actually, we’re a little curious about that ourselves,” Isobel admitted. “It’s hard to imagine any bank hiring— well, an exile.”

  “Plus, there’s the question of how he could use the Indices as his codebook if he’s blind,” Lars grumbled. “He must have someone else working with him.”

  “Look, Taya, we can get you this information,” Kyle said. “But we’ll need a few days to get into the bank’s system.”

  “How?”

  “We can say we found a problem in one of the lines of code we wrote last summer and need to correct it. Standard maintenance, but we’ll want to check all the records for the last few months to see whether any of transactions were affected. That’ll allow us to cross-reference these account numbers for you.”

  “You’d be violating security.”

  “We’d be giving you a single name to help you track down a major corporation that’s engaging in illegal trade with Alzana. We talked it over while you were gone, and none of us have any ethical problem with that.”

  “But you have to promise to report it to the authorities if it checks out,” Lars added. He raised a hand as Taya started to speak. “I know you will, but I want to be sure, okay? I don’t like shady stuff. It’s bad enough to find out that Alister’s punching again. I’m only letting it slide because it sounds like he’s doing it for a good cause.”

  “I told you, if you want to take your holiday while we do this, nobody will blame you,” Kyle said, earnestly. “I’m not going ask you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

  “Since when?” Lars shot his friend a dry look. Kyle coughed, looking away.

  “Ask you professionally,” Isobel clarified, deadpan.

  “I agree to your terms, Lars,” Taya said, quickly.

  “Then give us some time to get this worked out,” Kyle said. “We’ll send a memo expressing a slight concern with some of the code we wrote, and then another memo the next day that’s worded a little more strongly, and then we’ll recommend they let us come in to run the repaired program.”

  “Is this going to be bad for your reputation?”

  “We’ll make it something minor; a tiny glitch that doesn’t make any difference in the short run but could add up to a serious imbalance over a year or two.”

  “A problem calculating interest,” Isobel suggested. “Something that would ultimately cost the bank money; they’ll be in more of a hurry to let us fix it, then.”

  “Will you be safe?”

  “There’s no risk involved at all,” Kyle assured her.

  “I mean— we think someone tried to kill Cris to get this information. Having it could put you in danger.”

  “Nobody will ever know,” Kyle assured her.

  “I’ve heard that before,” Lars muttered.

  “They’ll know I visited you,” Taya objected.

  “If anyone asks, we’ll say your housekeeper showed you some problems in the Forlore accounts,” Isobel suggested. “You asked us to double-check the numbers, since we’re friends, and that’s how we figured out there’s an accounting glitch in the bank program.”

  “Nice.” Victor nodded with approval.

  “We were worried because our accounts were earning too much interest?” Taya asked, skeptically.

  “Just another example of our exalteds’ scrupulous honesty.” Victor smirked.

  “All right. I’ll make sure Mitta is in on the plan. But if the bank docks any of Cris’s savings as an adjustment….”

  Kyle laughed. “We won’t let that happen.”

  “Please don’t. It’s not my money.” Taya handed the papers back. “I have to make some visits today — Viera, my father, my sister — but maybe we can get together for dinner tonight? Cassi and Pyke wanted Cabisi.”

  “Sounds good,” Kyle said with a smile. “We’ll draft up the first memo and send it to the bank this afternoon.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two days later, Taya stood on the Safira train platform again, shivering in the icy morning air. She held the Council’s orders in one gloved hand, waiting for somebody to question her presence, but nobody gave her more than a passing glance.

  The Council had contacted her the same day she’d given the punch cards to Kyle and his team: The ambassador will be on the next train from Overlook.

  Exalted Constante had told her more when Taya had arrived on her doorstep biting back frustration and fretting about her husband’s health.

  “The Council wishes to talk to the ambassador and Lieutenant Amcathra,” Constante had said, standing in the foyer of her mansion as her servants adjusted her robes and waited with her ivory mask. “We saw no point in leaving them in a relatively unprotected hospital when we can bring them here to the safety of the capital.”

  “Is he well enough to travel?”

  “He is receiving the best care possible, under the circumstances. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a full day of meetings scheduled with every Lady-blessed man or woman who has anything halfway intelligent to say about the political and diplomatic situation developing in Mareaux.”

  “But we don’t think the assassination attempts had anything to do with Mareaux.”

  “Some decaturs think otherwise.” Constante gestured to the dedicate holding her mask.

  “Rikard was from Ondinium!” Taya protested, before freezing. Had Amcathra’s report mentioned Rikard?

  “But who convinced him to become an assassin while the delegation was in Mareaux?” the decatur asked, before the mask was placed over her face and her servants fastened it into place.

  Of course Amcathra’s report had mentioned Rikard. Biting back the rest of her protests, Taya bowed, her palm against her forehead, and left.

  An hour later she was summoned to the Tower to fill out reports and be debriefed by her superiors in the diplomatic corps.

  Jayce, Professor Dautry, and the rest of the delegation had arrived in Ondinium the next day with Macerain’s corpse. They’d heard rumors about the accident, and Taya’s appearance did nothing to reassure them. She dutifully refrained from answering their alarmed queries, though she exp
ected they’d learn the truth soon enough.

  A whistle announced the incoming train. Taya’s heart leaped as the engine rumbled past, followed by a long line of passenger and baggage cars. She hurried to the back of the platform as the train’s brakes screeched and displaced air rattled her metal wings. Red-coated porters paced the cars as the train ground to a halt. More whistles blew, and they threw open the doors and pulled down the folding steps with a loud clatter.

  Taya stopped at the last car, waiting as people surged off the rest of the train, shouting and waving and manhandling their luggage.

  Nobody opened the door.

  Taya was about to go in when a window slid down and Lieutenant Amcathra leaned out.

  “We will wait until the platform is emptier,” he said, his pale blue eyes sweeping past her to inspect the platform. “Does anybody know he is here?”

  “Just the Council. I have the paperwork to get you through security.” Taya handed the folded sheet of paper through the window. He perused it.

  “No names. Good. I have disguised him. Nobody will know he has returned until he is safely in Primus.”

  “Is he all right?” All Taya could see in the window was the station’s reflection in the glass.

  “Yes. Do not greet him until we are alone.”

  “Lieutenant!” she protested, but Amcathra slid up the window, cutting her off. She muttered a rude word and strode away from the train, turning and folding her arms over her chest.

  Twenty minutes later, most of the crowd had dissipated. Amcathra stepped out with his rifle nestled in the crook of one arm. He wasn’t carrying a cane, she noted, and the cuts and bruises on his face, like the ones on hers, were healing. The gash on his forehead was going to leave a scar.

  He looked around, nodded to her, and turned. Cristof slowly, carefully descended the steps, his long hair disheveled as it hung around his face. He was dressed in a laborer’s rough clothing and wore manacles on his wrists.

  Taya muffled a distressed sound as her husband lifted his head and squinted. His wave-shaped castemarks had been cosmetically hidden, replaced with an operate’s hook and circle. Still-healing scrapes and wounds covered his bruised face, the stitches raw and visible to the world. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and his pale grey eyes passed over her without any sign of recognition.